


Nothing Promised, No Regret

by CandlesInTheWell



Category: Sunless Sea
Genre: Crack Treated Seriously, Ficlet, Gen, POV Second Person, References to ABBA
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 03:36:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16359995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CandlesInTheWell/pseuds/CandlesInTheWell
Summary: Shore leave in Irem is a peculiar business.





	Nothing Promised, No Regret

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompt ‘100 words of ABBA.’ I’m a bit too proud of this one.

In Far Irem, where the sky meets the horizon and the flowing rivers of time converge to a single point, many strange things can be ( _Will be. Have already been._ ) seen. 

It is the mysteries that travelers speak of, but it is not only pyre-smoke and strange stories to be found there. For Irem is a city too, and a port, and like all ports it must offer solace to the weary zailor. The wines there are heady and redolent with spices, and give you dreams of things that might have been, sweet and bitter enough to call tears to the eyes. The painted youth that beckon you from doorways are sweet and bitter too, their eyes far older than their smiles; you cannot call to mind their faces when you leave, but the memory of their touch lingers.

And in the music halls that line the broad ways of the Pillared City, you can hear songs that have been lost to the ages, songs not yet written, songs that perhaps never will be ( _have already been_ ) written – for in music, especially, there is no time, and the span of all time, until the song must end.

In this moment which is all moments, when you walk from the salt-crusted docks into the deeper city, it is a song that calls you. It is like none of the music you know or have ever known, but when you step from the northern cold into the warmth of the crowded hall, where colored lights spin across the walls like false stars, the sound sweeps you back to a time when you were only a painted youth yourself, somewhere between sixteen and eighteen years and losing yourself for the first time in the magic of the dance. Your feet find the rhythm, and you feel the dark of the zee fall from you, and all the things you have done in its name. 

It cannot last. It will always last. When you leave, you be the Captain again, weary with years and the pain of scars that will not heal. Here, though, there is light and song, the certainty that all shall be and has always been well, and here ( _Now. Always._ ) –

You are the dancing queen.


End file.
